A man from upstate New York has been charged with providing false inspection reports and test certifications for parts used in SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, as well as vehicles from other aerospace contractors employed by the Defense Department. The misconduct was brought to light thanks to an investigation from NASA's inspector general, the FBI, and the Air Force's office of special investigations. The man, James Smalley, was a quality assurance engineer at PMI Industries, a machining company in Rochester, New York that makes various aerospace parts. In January of 2018, SpaceX directed the firm SQA Services to do an internal audit, which found that numerous PMI inspection reports and test certifications — used to confirm...

After having started its in orbit commissioning, since a few weeks the ESEO mission has been experiencing an anomaly. The educational path of the ESEO students however continues. The ESEO AMSAT-UK radio payload was successfully activated in the morning of 12 April 2019, and it started transmitting its payload telemetry. These data were received by many radio amateurs around the globe.

Sandia National Laboratories recently launched a bus into space. Not the kind with wheels that go round and round, but the kind of device that links electronic devices. The bus was among 16 total experiments aboard two sounding rockets that were launched as part of the National Nuclear Security Administration's HOT SHOT program, which conducts scientific experiments and tests developing technologies on nonweaponized rockets.

By virtue of this agreement, signed today at ESA's European Centre of Space Research and Technology (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, (The Netherlands), Tenerife will become the main European Centre of Space Communications by laser.

The results of a recent study conducted by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the agency's automatic interplanetary station, show the existence of 'permafrost' near the poles of the moon with a relatively high content of water ice (up to 5% by weight). It is believed that water ice could supply a life support system for the future Russian Lunar Station, and that it could also produce hydrogen-oxygen fuel for flights into deep space.

Breaking into the launch industry is no easy task, but New Zealand's Rocket Lab has done it without missing a step. The company has just completed its third commercial launch of 2019, and is planning to increase the frequency of its launches until there's one a week. It's ambitious, but few things in spaceflight aren't. Although it has risen to prominence over the last two years at a remarkable rate, the appearance of Rocket Lab in the launch market isn't exactly sudden. One does not engineer and test an orbital launch system in a day. The New Zealand-based company was founded in 2006, and for years pursued smaller projects while putting together the Rutherford rocket engine, which would eventually power its Electron launch vehicle. Far from the ambitions of the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin, which covet heavy-launch capabilities to compete with ULA to bring payloads beyond Earth orbit, Rocket Lab and its Electron LV have been laser-focused on frequent and reliable access to orbit. Utilizing 3D printed ...